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Grad rates up

NEW ULM — The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) announced record graduation rates across the state for 2016 Thursday.

Last year 82.2 percent of all Minnesota students in the 2016 class graduated. That is an increase of 5 points over the 2011 rate and one third of a percent more than 2015.

The department also observed the graduation gap between white and non-white students decrease in 2016.

Graduation rates for black students increased 24 points since 2006 to 65.1. Hispanic student graduation rates increased 24.4 points over the same time frame to 65.3 percent.

American Indian students, who have long held one of the lowest graduation rates according to a MDE press release, also saw an increase over the last decade. The graduation rate for them rose 9.9 points to 52.6 percent.

At New Ulm Public Schools 97.1 percent of high school seniors graduated in 2016, an increase of eight tenths of a percent over 2015.

“Part of it is the connections we have with the kids and knowing them and working with them on their struggles,” Superintendent Jeff Bertrang said. “We have these intervention programs we have been working with; we have ways of making up credits, whether it is during the skinny times, before school, after school or summer school; we are always giving another option to make up what they missed.”

It is possible the 2016 graduation rate will increase as students who take five or six years to graduate will be rolled into that year’s rates, Bertrang said.

Last year the graduation rate increased 4.1 points over the 2012 rate of 93 percent, which is the earliest data available through the Minnesota Report Card website.

Graduation rates for students with free or reduced lunch plans and female students were the two areas where District 88 declined from last year.

In 2016 88 percent of students with free or reduced lunch plans graduated, a drop of 4.6 points from the year before.

“We know that the free and reduced lunch population has been a concern for us because they do not have the same support structures at home due to whatever family dynamics,” Bertrang said.

Rates for students receiving free and reduced lunches have otherwise been on an increase since 2012, when 76.9 percent graduated.

The female graduation rate for 2016 was 96.9 percent, a little more than one point lower that 2015 rate of 98.2 percent. The decrease is likely changes in population and nothing significant, Bertrang said.

Additionally, the male graduation rate for 2016 was 97.2 percent. That is 2.3 points higher than the previous year’s rate of 94.9 percent.

No racial demographic information was available from the Minnesota Report Card website due to numbers being too small to report publicly.

Connor Cummiskey can be emailed at ccummiskey@nujournal.com.

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